(Editor’s note: This is part one of a four-article series covering the essentials of no-till planting and seeding to help growers get better results.)

IN SPITE OF all the technological wonders available today for no-till planters, drills and air seeders, something very simple can cause problems — like leveling the planter. 

Paul Schaffert says he’s been getting a number of complaints from customers having trouble getting seed corn into the bottom of the trench and getting the slot to close with his products, like the Rebounder seed cover. 

What the owner of Schaffert Mfg. discovered in these cases was farmers weren’t getting their planter leveled properly. “If you looked at a side view of the planter while in motion through the field, you would see that the hitch was pointed slightly downward, which meant the rear of the planter was higher than the front,” Schaffert says.

“That causes the planter not to shoot the seed corn straight down into the slot where the Rebounders would normally push it properly into the bottom of…